Mad About Unity

The Unique Fellowship of the Clearly Divided

The main point of the Vatican’s “Responses to Some Questions
Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church”—written,
apparently, against Catholics who continue despite frequent correction to distort
the teaching of the Second Vatican Council for their own (liberal) ends—can
be easily summarized as “The Catholic Church says that the Catholic Church
teaches that the Catholic Church is the Catholic Church.” I would not
have thought that this would be news to anyone, since the point was made in Lumen
Gentium in 1964, restated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in
1994, and amplified in Dominus Iesus in 2000, but it was.

Soldiering On

When the statement appeared in July, some mainline churchmen expressed their
hurt and vowed bravely to soldier on in the ecumenical calling that Rome has
now callously made so much harder.

A leader of the world’s Lutherans called the Vatican’s “exclusive
claims” “troubling,” and said that “what may have been
meant to clarify has caused pain.” An Episcopal leader insisted that “we
are a ‘church’ in every sense of the word,” but added that “none
of these disagreements, however, will lessen our commitment to remain in international
and national ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.”

Others reacted more strongly. A leader of the world’s Reformed Christians
declared that the teaching “goes against the spirit of our Christian
calling towards oneness in Christ.” The statement, he protested to the
Vatican, “makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for
Christian unity.”

A leading Waldensian theologian in Italy said that the statement was “offensive
for us as Protestants,” while an Italian church historian said it “fatally
wounded” the Catholic Church’s ecumenical credibility. These reactions
represent many others, and there were some more violent, like the American
who declared that “someone needs to wake up the pope and remind him—and
the rest of the guys hibernating inside the Vatican—that we are living
in the year 2007,” pitying Catholic leaders for being “so blind
to what God has been doing outside their isolated little world for so many
years.”

For all the furrowed brows and teary eyes and puffed out chests, these responses
were characterized by an implicit theological imperialism. These critics all
appealed to some ideal of ecumenical understanding and a particular definition
of the Church to condemn the Catholic Church’s restatement of her traditional
doctrine. They said, in essence, that the Catholic Church was wrong to make
the claims that she did, because (though as far as I know no one ever said
this out loud) she is not who she says she is.

In other words, in the name of ecumenical understanding these critics insisted
upon their own doctrine of the Church, with precisely the conviction but little
of the honesty of the Vatican’s statement. A particular ecclesiology
was hidden in moralistic assertions about ecumenical sensitivity.

Healthier and more helpful, certainly, was the kind of response exemplified
in the Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler, a friend of this magazine’s.
He said in an article published by the Baptist Press that “Evangelicals
should appreciate the candor reflected in this document. There is no effort
here to confuse the issues. To the contrary, the document is an obvious attempt
to set the record straight.”

He went on to say, with candor equal to the statement’s, that the nature
of the Church

is an issue worthy of division. The Roman Catholic Church is willing to
go so far as to assert that any church that denies the papacy is no true
church. Evangelicals should be equally candid in asserting that any church
defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church. This is not a theological
game for children; it is the honest recognition of the importance of the
question.

Having made the doctrinal disagreement clear (and I should note that not
every Protestant defines the Church this way), he then said of Pope Benedict,
generously and liberally:

I also appreciate the spiritual concern reflected in this document. The
artificial and deadly dangerous game of ecumenical confusion has obscured
issues of grave concern for our souls. I truly believe that Pope Benedict
and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are concerned for our
evangelical souls and our evangelical congregations.

The mainline leaders already quoted remind me of a dysfunctional family in
group therapy all making “I” statements, in an attempt to dominate
the others by proving themselves the greatest victim. I can imagine, were they
living in another time, Dr. Mohler and Pope Benedict bowing to each other before
drawing their swords, and the winner weeping over the body of the other. That
kind of engagement is not only more romantic, it is more honorable and more
useful.

Wrong But Not Wicked

Among the editors of this magazine, the statement raised not an eyebrow.
This very diverse group includes several Catholics, the dean of the Southern
Baptist seminary of which Dr. Mohler is president and other Protestants, and
an Antiochian Orthodox archpriest and other Orthodox.

None of us is going to talk of feeling pained or complain that any ecclesial
body states its teaching clearly. We would be disappointed if it didn’t.

Our first rule of operation, which has sustained a high degree of fellowship,
even brotherhood, across traditionally sundering differences, is to assume
that the other man may be very wrong, but he is not stupid nor wicked. As G.
K. Chesterton said, the bigot is not the man who believes he is right. Every
sane man believes that. The bigot is the man who cannot understand how the
other fellow came to be wrong. We each can understand how the other came to
be wrong.

We assume that the other man has plausible reasons for believing as he does,
and that he is not consciously sinning against the light but pursuing it through
the tradition of which he is a part and in the modes that tradition provides,
even if we all think that the other traditions let in only part of the light.
We assume he is pursuing a true Christian ideal, one we all share, even if
we think his map is wrong or incomplete. We recognize his commitment to the
shared Christian doctrinal and moral tradition.

We draw a firm line between us and the skeptics, modernists, liberals, relativists,
and others whose adherence to their own traditions is partial or corrupt, and
a thin and flexible line between us and those conservative believers who accept
some apparently worldly ideology opposed to the shared Christian heritage,
egalitarianism being the most obvious example. Hence our ability to draw together
people who disagree about whether infants can be baptized but our mutual decision
to leave outside the circle (if often just outside the circle) those who declare
that women can be ordained.

One needs a certain generosity and liberality to do this, married (we hope)
with a discernment of principle, but it seems to work. It allows us happily
to do together what we can do together, which seems to us part of being a Christian.

Most of us find ourselves disappointing the stricter members of our communions,
who think us liberals, while upsetting the looser members, who think us reactionaries.
In my experience the intensity of the reaction is stronger from our left than
from our right. The right tends to be quizzical, the left angry, and the center-left
(those just outside the circle) the angriest of all.

The Way to Fellowship

But as I said, it seems to work. The way to whatever ecumenical understanding
and fellowship we may achieve in this life, in which brother is divided from
brother for what seems to each good reason, is not to deny the differences,
especially when that denial is merely a way of asserting one’s doctrine.

The way to ecumenical understanding is to admit the differences, submit to
one’s tradition, respect the integrity of the others, and join with them
in facing the common challenges. This you can do with unfurrowed brow and clear
eyes, the better to see your brothers for themselves.

David Mills , former editor of Touchstone and executive editor of First Things, is a senior editor of The Stream and columnist for several Catholic publications. His last book is Discovering Mary. He and his family attend St. Joseph's Church in Corapolis, PA.

“Mad About Unity” first appeared in the October 2007 issue of Touchstone. If you enjoyed this article, you'll find more of the same in every issue.

Letters Welcome: One of the reasons Touchstone exists is to encourage conversation among Christians, so we welcome letters responding to articles or raising matters of interest to our readers. However, because the space is limited, please keep your letters under 400 words. All letters may be edited for space and clarity when necessary. letters@touchstonemag.com